When you think Avant Garde, you think Ornette Coleman, Coltrane,
Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, the minimalists, AACM,
Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, the Ganelin Trio. Strange changes,
unusual chord progressions, improvisation of the unexpected, exposure
of the beauty and of the ugliness in their extremes... Where does
it all come from, why does it persist? Anna Akhmatova said, "If
only you knew from what refuse the poetry is born!" From what
refuse the music is born, from what raw materials and residuals
the sound takes shape? Where is the source? Who said it first? Who
played it first? Was it a product of one's imagination and will
to break, then expanding the boundaries of music to tie the loose
and lost ends of the worn-out grooves?

Vienna Art Orchestra (VAO) doesn't provide the answers to any of
these questions; its members have too much fun taking music and
having their way with it. And what music can be more appropriate
to dissect, twist around, mold and put back together than that of
one Eric Satie?

Satie, the original "Enfant Terrible", was a strange man
with strange thoughts that produced strange music with strange titles
that don't seem so shocking today ("Jack-in-the-Box", "Driveling
Preludes for a Dog", "Dried Embryos"), but considering
that he was born two centuries ago, this bad boy of classical music
deserves a very close look.

Satie lived an unconventional life and demanded the same from those
who attempted to sneak a peek into it. For example, his notes to
Vexations require To play this motif 840 times in succession
which was eventually done, decades after his death. Repetition and
evolution in music were an experiment, and repetition in life seemed
a necessity. After his death it became known that he had several
dozen umbrellas, dozens upon dozens of handkerchiefs, all identical.
He never let anyone into his apartment, he wore the same exact velvet
suits, of which he had twelve, and he wrote some strikingly original
music, yet his name isn't as well known as those of composers he
had influenced, from Milhaud, Poulenc, Debussy and Ravel to John
Cage and John Zorn. He composed modal piano works, avant ballets,
circus music, and film scores and was cool in a way that someone
who died in 1925 can be considered cool.

How far from the notated Satie is the music on this album?
It depends. If you are after the note-for-note reproduction of the
written scores on the instruments for which it was written, you
ought to look elsewhere. Aldo Ciccolini is considered the master
of Satie's piano music, and there are more than a few current orchestras
in the classical realm that give Satie a worthy homage.

Here is something else music is set free, detaching itself from
the trampoline of Satie's compositions and bouncing from arrangements
to improvisations. Mathias Ruegg, the leader of the VAO, titled some
of the music Reflections and like reflections on the water
they are not mirror images, but rather a set of pieces based on Satie's
works organized to show the Orchestra's view of his music. They are
memorable, but far from mundane. On the contrary, here the orchestrations
are fresh and unusual in their representation of the soloists' improvised
take on how they feel about Satie. The music ranges from several
short orchestral pieces on the first half of the album to the lengthier
solo reflections of Lauren Newton, Roman Schwaller and Wolfgang Puschnig,
all brilliantly accompanied on vibes by Woody Schabata. Interestingly,
many of the compositions are two-pronged, with renditions of Satie's
originals played quasi-straight and followed by the improvisations
from the Orchestra members. In his younger days Satie worked as a
café pianistan improvisational connection here, perhaps?

It's impossible to say whether Satie would've liked this excursion,
for all we know, given his explosive temperament, he might have
chased the Orchestra members off the stage with one of his umbrellas,
but for me this disc remains one of the more original and interesting
interpretations of any classical composer to date.

In a sort of an ironic slap in the face, Satie's Gymnopedies
seem to be the favorite of more than a few budget "classical
relaxation" compilations; he has been written off as a "musical
humorist" by his contemporaries, only to be resurrected in our
time as a hefty cornerstone of all of modern music. One can only hope
that he does not become another embalmed head in the long row of dusted-off
geniuses, in line to what seems to be the set routenovelty and
innovation, followed by dismissal and obscurity, followed by revival,
acknowledgement and comfort of recognition, spelling death to the
original ideas and goals. The Minimalism of Eric Satie makes
this hope of evolution and experiment a beautiful reality.